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I’m a Ottawa BUG member and currently provide the BUG Jams with the OnSong/ChordPro converted files and run the the BUG Night song overhead displays.

I have notice that you have uploaded the complete BUG OnSong archive (current as of Oct 2014) at your website. I must point out that this document (the BUG OnSong archive) is not available at the web BUG site and that it was given to you without any of the due credits.

This body of work represents more than 4 years of work by many BUG contributors (Sue Rogers, Gordon Thomas, Mike Cox, Chris Hill, Charles de Lint, Dominique Joly, Christopher Taylor, Timothy Blinks, Tim Kitz, Sharon Baird, Paddy Rayburn, Joel Jacques, Dave Mayerovitch and several others) and the ever careful editing of “UkuleleMa” Sue Rogers. I currently convert 99% of the BUG song sets to OnSong/ChordPro text files and I have done so since 2012. Personally this work represents hundreds of hours of my work converting Sue’s lovely .docx Song pages (>700 songs), building the conversion text tools, and preparing/uploading the PDF/ChordPro set and song versions. (I also email the BUG song set OnSong archive to BUG Archive subscribers before each Bug Jam and I would suggest that you email me with a request to be put on the BUG song set OnSong archive email list.)

I must compliment you on getting the Uke Geeks Song-a-matic up and running. You may have noticed that some of the BUG archived song show as incomplete or just look odd when displayed by the Song-O-Matic, this is due to the use of the OnSong mark-up in some of the files. OnSong mark-ups extend the basic ChordPro mark-up set and as such do not render in properly in Song-O-Matic. For example a “*” at the front on a line mean print bold in OnSong mark-up, “#” comment out the line, “:” at the end of a line is also Bold the Line. I try to avoid using the OnSong mark-ups but Sue’s delightful editing leaves me with little choice but to use them. I can send you a guide containing a complete list of OnSong mark-ups (if you wish) as there are many hidden features.

Sue is constantly editing and re-editting the BUG Song list and you will find the most up to date .docx printable and the ChordPro/OnSong/PDF text song versions on the BUG Jam or songs pages.

You are right. Credit where credit is due. I did give thanks to BUG for the music in the post launching the song book, but I need to do more. I’m going to edit the software to include full credit in the library itself.

I’ve said before that this group wouldn’t exist without Joel and Bytown’s encouragement. This library is more proof that I owe you all a great deal of thanks.

Four of us are attempting to get a regular ukulele club/jam session going in Saskatoon. As far as I know,, other than seniors groups, there isn’t one here. We would be very grateful for any advice you could give us. I would love to see this succeed.

That’s great! I’ve had a couple of people ask if I knew of anything happening in Saskatoon.

I’ll try to put some thoughts together and send you an email. My best advice is to just go for it. I had no idea if anyone would show up to our first circle, but we quickly grew to 20 then 30 then 40 people. If you can visit an existing circle, you can figure out what would work for your group, but for the first few months I was mostly making it up as I went along. Eventually I figure out what works best and a structure naturally developed.

The most important part of our group – and probably the hardest to plan for – is the people. We have some extremely talented mutli-instrumentalists and others who have never played so much as a kazoo before. It’s hard to strike the right balance when introducing new music, but the ukulele lends itself to a wide mix of players; it’s easy enough for beginners to grasp and even the most accomplished musicians can still have fun playing simple two and three chord songs.

The store has ukuleles you can try if you don’t own one yet. A tuner is recommended, although we’re a friendly bunch and are happy to share. We project the music onto the wall so your own binder and stand aren’t needed unless you prefer to use them. The room can be pretty cozy so the fewer stands the better. A great singing voice is a nice touch, but most of us make up for that with enthusiasm.

Dear Dave my sister-in-law and I would like to join your group. I was a member last year and we would like to know if we can pay on line to have access to your music. We play with Micki cowan, but because we are out of town we rarely make a session. However if we rehearse the same tunes as she I learning we can jam together at family functions. Love your group, great club, thanks for all you do.